2010/02/26

Stumbled across this today: it's a blog post describing 10 tools to "manage your followers" on Twitter--well you can see it for yourself (view on Google Sidewiki), however the practices and "tools" described there are exactly how you should NOT use Twitter. Ever.

Number one says "mass unfollow those who are not following you back"... why? Unless you're a bot, a spammer, or running a pyramid/gifting scam, you would never want advice like this. Twitter is about following the people that interest you. It's not a popularity contest (or at least people need to stop treating it like it is). Unfollowing because someone is not following back is just bullshit. Get over yourself if you do this. Furthermore, this only affects who you're following, not your followers. The post was supposed to be about managing your followers, right? Not who you're following so much, or so I thought.

Next, "automatically unfollow..." I'll stop there because, again: this post was supposed to be about who is following you...right?

Skip a couple of very obscure and iffy suggestions for tools and you come to "unfollow people who have not updated" ... well, again wasn't the title of this blog post something like "manage your followers"? By now, I'm not even sure anymore.

Next we come to "find out which tweet made you popular..." yeah, OK, that might be interesting information--if it's even accurate--but the site is in German! Not worth the trouble, sorry.

Then, we have "find out your retweet rank". I don't know, I'm not terribly concerned about how often I get retweeted. I mean, it's nice when my followers retweet something cool//funny/important I said, but even so my worth is not a measure of my retweetedness. If your self-esteem hinges on how often people are retweeting you, go see a therapist, because your "retweet rank" is the least of your problems. This is another one of those things that really only bots, spammers, and scammers would need to be this concerned about.

Which brings us to number 3--no, I mean 8. Wait, is this in here twice? "Find out who's following who"? I swear this blogger just recommended a tool that did the exact same thing for #3. The interesting part of this tool's mention, however, is where the author writes, "if you want to steal a power users 'precious friends', this tool comes in pretty handy". Come again? Steal a... wait, what is this blog post even about? I'm completely lost, now.

Well, moving on, I suppose... "find out common followers..." naw, don't care. Why would I need to know this? If they were a friend of mine, I'd be following them already. If they're not a friend, but turn out to be interesting, I'll find out about them through the friend we mutually share. I don't need a tool like this... unless I were a bot, a spamm--oh, you get the picture.

By the time we get to tool number 10, we don't even care anymore. So, to sum things up. If you want to be a bot, a spammer, or a pyramid scammer, you'll probably love this article. However, we learned exactly zilch about managing our followers. But wait, don't go just yet... There's a bonus 11th tool! Hey, wait! Where are you going!?...